hrj

 I think I have a case of the quaranblahs this week. Just not feeling like much of anything. But there are a few bright spots. I picked the first ripe strawberries of the year from my garden this morning and savored a couple at random intervals during the day, saving half for tomorrow. On my lunch bike ride I played marmalade fairy and dropped off a jar of orange marmalade, one of apple chutney, and a baggie of candied orange peel at the home of an online-friend-who-happens-to-live-in-my-town. Doing the Produce of My Estates thing is so much more fun when I can share it.

Speaking of which, I'm pondering an online version of my planned "share the estates" party for my birthday next week. Still refining the idea but the basic plan is to do something communal and creative with variants for participation by people of all abilities and on various platforms. Stay tuned for details.

The Tuesday evening movie night with the mostly-NY-area-crowd is getting ever more technologically convoluted in trying to find ways to share movies in various online meeting rooms while dodging around DRM issues. Tonight's experience ran through three different venues with shifting combinations of connectivity problems for different people. I ended up having to phone in to the meeting in order to get any sound, since I was only getting (jerky) video on the laptop. The communal aspect of it is fun, but the movie-watching aspect isn't very satisfying. But tonight we finally managed to watch "Bride and Prejudice." (Bollywood-style interpretation of Jane Austen, which works extremely well for the cultural parallels.) My delivery dinner was curry and naan to match the mood, and I have enough leftovers for one or two more dinners.

I made my first actual loaf of sourdough bread with my pet culture! And it tastes just like sourdough should taste! The culture is currently having a time-out in the fridge and my next task is to determine a regular schedule for growth, use, and hibernation to keep it healthy without burying me in more bread than I can eat. My dad put in a bid for some home-baked sourdough on my next grocery delivery, which means I need to figure out the timing of when I need to start the production cycle for a specific delivery date.

 While the theory of writing the day's blog post at the end of the day when I know what I've done is fine as a plan, in practice my brain seems to wind down too much by then to remember consistently. But whatevs, the biggest principle I have in life and ShIP is "don't invent rules for the game that you can't win." So I post when I post. I cook with the Produce of My Estates when I feel like it and don't get bent out of shape when I don't. One "rule" that I'm strongly endorsing in my own life (with no judgment for anyone else) is "use the good stuff" (h/t Ursula Vernon). I'm eating every meal on the good china (well, ok, it's my only china). No scarfing the leftovers out of the tupperware you nuked them in. Since I'm cooking enough to run a dishwasher load every day, the same resources get used no matter how many dishes get dirty. I'm brewing up my work-afternoon tea in the heirloom silver teapot. And while I'm not dressing *up* to "go to the office" (since I never did in the first place) I do have a firm principle to *dress*, though the vagaries of my home heating mean that I generally start the morning in my fluffy pink robe over the office clothes. I find that clothing helps cue my brain for the activity I'm focusing on.

The role of the ShIP in enlarging my social life continues. Yesterday my "we each live alone so let's check in on each other every day" fb group did a coffee break zoom gettogether and decided to make it a regular Friday morning thing. Then another chat in the evening. I keep thinking of suggesting to my dad & brothers that we try setting up a regular zoom chat, but trying to organize our schedules might be tricky.

During the coffee break chat, Denise mentioned that she's already gone through the last jar of orange marmalade I gave her, so for my lunchtime bike ride I swung by and dropped off (safe distancing!) a jar of the Gervase Markham marmalade this time, with a bag of cinnamon apple chips (from last year's apple crop -- I apparently have hit on the trick of making freeze-dried apple slices without having a freeze-dryer).

I'm continuing to struggle with my earthlink email (not sure if I've mentioned that here -- I griped about it on facebook). In short: earthlink decided I needed to change to a "more secure" password (they're probably not wrong), but having done so, when I went to update the email apps on my laptop and phone with the new password, evidently Apple has decided that earthlink doesn't do imap. And trying to use imap settings forced into a pop template only returns error messages.

So I had to reset my accounts for pop, but I'd also untagged automated spam flagging at the earthlink server because it was having far too many false positives. So now I'm drowning in a couple hundred spam emails a day that I have to manually delete on both devices. My workaround currently is deleting the iPhone earthlink account and setting up the separate earthlink app (which *is* imap).

But in the mean time, my desktop mail program has changed its mind and, while it's receiving mail, it refuses to *send* mail from my earthlink address. I should note that many of the annoying features in this process have appeared spontaneously at times when I haven't changed anything. I think part of it is various bits of information having propagation delays at both ends, but it makes troubleshooting almost impossible since I can't get immediate feedback on what works or what breaks something new.

And many (but not all) the emails sent from my earthlink account that had been sitting in my "sent" folder on the laptop have disappeared. Which I discovered when trying to trace some of my recent podcast correspondence and found them missing. Sometimes I move business emails from the "sent" folder to the topic-specific folder to have them all in one place, but not consistently.

I'm wondering if something has happened in the apple/earthlink interface that is simply irrevocably broken. My earthlink email is the oldest one I have, but it has periodic issues. Like: evidently some systems randomly decide it's insecure and decide not to propagate it. I have a bunch of other email addresses (one through apple, several through my own web domain, I have a gmail account, in theory I can have free att addresses because they're my provider). But the earthlink address is the one I've given out most generally and it would be a real pain to phase it out.

The other possibility (which I dread) is that the desktop mail app needs upgrading. My suspicion is based on the regularity with which it's been spontaneously crashing lately. (Several times a day. Glancing at the icon, it is currently closed.) So before I try any troubleshooting on that end, I need to figure out a way to back up all my archived email files. Such is my life.

But I need to sign off because I have an interview to record!

A couple years ago I decided I wanted to start having a "signature event" so that at least once a year I could invite friends over to hang out and enjoy the fabulous garden I work so hard on. Garden...a garden party! There's the ticket. Not a hoity-toity white gloves and watercress sandwiches garden party, but just a party. In a garden. But not just any party -- I thought it would be fun to alternate the socializing with letting anyone who wanted to do short readings from their writing. (Participating in the readings is not at all required. Participating in listening to them is, however, compulsory.)

The first one was a great success, and then I kind of dropped the ball and didn't schedule one last year. So this year I'm starting early. If this sounds like your kind of thing, save the date for Saturday June 10.

When plans get a little more advanced, there's be more information about invites and whatnot.

It may seem strange to talk about "surviving" conventions, given that I've scheduled myself for so many of them this year. Why would I do that to myself if I don't enjoy them for their own sake? Well, of course, I do enjoy conventions. Or rather, I can enjoy conventions…if I plan for success, have appropriate win conditions, and have a little bit of luck.

My surprised comments when I succeed in having a really good convention experience tend to go on facebook (or maybe twitter) rather than appearing here. But as I'm sitting here at the Holiday Inn in Tampa, Florida, the day before Rainbow Con is to begin, it might be worth ruminating on just how a shy introvert plans for success (on the off chance that someone else might find my techniques useful). Not saying that my plans always work out as intended! But having a plan is better than not.

1. Don't have unrealistic expectations. I will never be one of those people who shows up at a convention where I don't know anyone and walks away with twenty new best friends. I will never attend a convention where I have hordes of adoring fans clamoring for my time and attention. I will never attend a convention where simply showing up is all I need to do to have a good time.

2. Whenever possible, identify lone individuals who may be open to interaction and take the opportunity to "become real" to them. This will make it much easier later to approach groups of people that they are included in and use them as a way to include myself. For example, this afternoon I wandered down to the lounge/bar for a snack, spotted someone with a laptop and manuscript pages laid out on a table, and engaged in a lengthy interaction on the (correct) assumption that they were also here early for the convention.

3. Use my (carefully-budgeted) social energy to enable other people's interactions, rather than focusing on my own. If I have meal plans, look for other people to include in them. If I'm in a conversation, keep an eye peeled for others who might want to join in. Hard to do if I don't have that starting interaction to include people in, but it takes my focus off my own comfort and lets me feel like I have social power, which helps.

4. Know my limits. Sometimes this is knowing the point in the evening when, in the words of the Mabinogi, "it is better to go to sleep than to continue partying"[*] Sometimes this is knowing which scheduled events are going to be major pitfalls for me. Crowded noisy room parties where I don't know anyone and there's no scope for easy one-on-one conversation are pretty much a dead loss. I try to remember not to bother. I've developed some techniques for cocktail party type situations (see my post here) but I need a good reason to make it worth pulling them out.

5. Pre-arrange structured interactions with people, especially ones that will result in adding new individuals to my comfort-circle (i.e., people I feel comfortable spontaneously initiating interactions with). This goes beyond simply asking "who do I know who's going to be at event X?" It's "I'd like to meet up with you at some point during event X; could we pencil in a specific meal in advance?" I have a calendar alert set up currently to contact a couple of specific people a couple weeks out from Worldcon to make specific arrangements to get together there. Yes, an actual calendar alert. It's silly, but it's better than relying on luck. And, of course, participating in programming is an ideal sort of structured interaction. I don't have to justify my presence or my right to interact, both with the other panelists and the audience. I then have an easy reference point when meeting those panelists again.

6. This is going to sound like a contradiction to #5: avoid locking myself in to a specific schedule and program too much; leave room for spontaneous interactions (or for opting out of interacting at all, if necessary). One of the opportunities for Rainbow Con was to have an "author's table" to sell my books and as a locus for interacting with others. I immediately saw this as more of a trap than an opportunity, because if I were tied down to a table, I was at the mercy of other people choosing to interact with me. And that way lies isolation with only The Bad Voices for company. (Also, with only two publications to sell, it didn't seem like a productive use of my time.)

7. Take notes and turn them into introductions. This is a technique I learned when I first started going to academic conferences. For each panel/session I attended, I made note of a specific follow-up question for a specific person, so that I later had an excuse to approach that person and initiate a conversation. (And everyone loves talking about themself! To be sure, it's also enjoyable to have other people interested in what I have to say. But if the "win condition" is "have an interaction", the surest way to accomplish that is to give the other person an opportunity/excuse to talk.)

8. Because it bears repeating: know my limits. Know when to opt out. If I get to that point in a social event when all my emotional energy is going toward holding myself together because nobody is interacting with me or acknowledging my existence, it is well past the point when I should have left. Because once you're hiding in the ladies' room crying, the evening is never going to get any better. Trust me.

So you're thinking, "Wow, that sounds like a lot of work! Why in the world do you go to conventions when it seems like the most you can hope for is to fail to fail?" Well, because when it does work, it's fabulous. And because I do enjoy making friends and hanging out with them at conventions…when it works. And the only way I can make it work is to work at it. Other people may have a natural talent, but all I have is my talent for over-analysis.

[*] No, seriously. There's a point in the First Branch where the narrator says, "A phan welsant uot yn well udunt kymryt hun no dilyt kyuedach, y gyscu yd aethant." That is: And when they saw that it would be better for them to take sleep than to continue partying, they went to sleep."

At some point after I moved to Concord, five years ago, I decided that I needed a "signature party" like all my friends seemed to have. I have a hard time dealing with the details of planning social events, but I figured that some sort of open-invite theme party would be within my cope-scope.

As my garden started taking shape, it became clear to me that it needed to be the context for my signature party…which gave me an excuse to put it off for a while until I felt the yard was in the proper shape. At some point this winter, I set myself the goal of getting everything in shape to have my first garden party this year.

The second part of my party theme came courtesy of thread_walker, who suggested that I invite all my author friends to come and read from their works. It sounded like the perfect excuse for bringing together friends from all my different social circles, and everyone could be audience, after all! So I scanned the calendar and picked a date that didn't conflict too badly with anything I was aware of. That would be next Saturday. (If you're local, would like to come, and haven't received an invitation either because you aren't on facebook or because I didn't think you'd be interested, let me know.)

In addition to the incremental improvements to the garden, the big project in preparation was taking out the annoying concrete walkway along the back side of the yard. This was necessary so that I could finish installing the last bit of the "formal garden", which overlapped the walkway slightly. I haven't gotten very far at filling in the shallow trench this project produced, but we'll cope.

So today's project was cleaning up the back yard: mowing, raking, some pruning. Tomorrow I finish laying out the walkways in the formal garden and get the fountain cleaned, adjusted, and running. Oh, and clean up the inside of the house a little bit. Heck, maybe I'll finish the "complete once-through housecleaning" I started back in January.

Heres's where the party will be held (or actually: in the shade of the mulberry tree off to the right of this).

If I don't post a trip report as I go along, I won't remember to do it at all.

Uneventful flight to Kennedy airport, at which I was met by my Girlfriend in New York, hereafter to be referred to in usual LJ pseudonymy as "GFiNY". We took an assortment of public transit to get back to her apartment, which is literally half a block from Central Part (and just across the street from the Dakota of John Lennon fame). I feel a bit like I've fallen into some sort of archetypal Old New York experience. I don't believe I've ever previously visited someone where you get let into the building by an actual doorman. The building was originally build as a hotel, so the kitchen-like-object literally started out as a closet, but the first-floor lobby is all glitzed up with stone tiles and ceiling ornaments and whatnot. We went out to dinner at an Italian place in Grenwich Village and then did a bit of a walking tour all around that area afterwards before toddling off back home.

This morning we started out with a stroll across Central Park, followed by wandering around a tiny snippet of the Met (mostly the Egyptian, Roman, and Medieval rooms) and lunch. Then more walking tour of downtown architecture (I love the little narrow old buildings squashed between later additions), a stop for coffee, then a look at a private textile exhibit (which was supposed to be a meetup with one of GFiNY's friends but she didn't show), more walking tour plus subway back. There will be sending out for Chinese and then we're off to a show. (Spiderman.)

I still have no holistic understanding of the subway system, but so far I haven't needed to.

A very satisfying day Monday. Dropped off a couple of shawms with their maker in Menlo Park for a tune-up then meandered up over the hills to get to Hwy 1. Parked at one of the many little state beaches and did a bunch of wandering around in the sand and surf, poking at pretty rocks and shells. Hiked up to the top of a cliff and tried to identify all sorts of flora. Then we drove casually down the coast a bit and had lunch at a taqueria in Pescadero. On to Año Nuevo beach and hiked out to the elephant seal viewing area. Then on to Santa Cruz where we met ritaxis for dinner on the pier, viewing sea lions, and a brief walking tour of bits along the way. (There was also the episode with the ticks. It seems that a number of ticks had decided to come along for the ride at some point in our hiking. I didn't manage to get any, but the guests were thoroughly icked out.)

Now I'm back at work and the houseguests are off with my car to Mendocino for a couple days. Next on the tourist agenda will be a Saturday morning excursion on the Oakland-SF ferry to see the bay and go to the SF ferry building farmer's market. If anybody'd like to join us, either for the ferry ride or just for the farmer's market stroll, let me know so we can coordinate.

It was a lovely intimate little tea party, with acanthusleaf, ldyanna, and joycebre in attendence:



The basic idea was to put together a light afternoon tea that was appropriate for the 1870s (the original date of the tea set) and if possible included foods mentioned in great-great-grandpa Abiel's diaries. The diary angle was tough (although I always enjoy getting sucked into reading it) because he didn't tend to write about food in detail. ( Interested in more? )

Dragged out my old Victorian riding habit for Dickens Faire tomorrow and determined that it was passable with some quick and dirty taking in at several places. Unlike a number of other outfits, I'm unlikely to do serious alterations on this one (but will probably also keep it around). It just isn't an era I do much costuming in but it's useful to have something to wear. I have a bit of a fascination with riding habits as a genre and it provides an excuse for not bothering with excessive underpinnings.

I'll be quite the social butterfly this weekend: Dickens with xrian, scotica and possibly others; etaine_pommier's cookie party; and then tafelspitz's aebelskiver breakfast. I suppose I should also get the holiday cards addressed and mailed (probably no chatty letter this time, easier than figuring out what to say) and at least start brainstorming on gift-shopping.

Still writing every day. Have a good handle on how I want to approach name-generation, but I need to sit down and actually apply the sound rules to a large body of name-candidates and see what starts sticking to which characters. (I have, however, drawn up an extensive list of People and Places That Need Names.) I'm starting to think that, having solidly laid down Part I, it may not be that bad an idea to have jumped to the end and started working backwards from Part V. I'm "discovering" a number of useful and convenient things that are going to have happened, and working backwards makes it easier to set them up. Still, not the most natural way to work (and probably not the most efficient in the long run.)

Dashing hither and yon all weekend. Saturday I dropped by Crown Tourney for a couple hours in the morning, mostly to drop off the tunic I made for the Prince of the Mists (who was gratifyingly appreciative). Then it was off to badassslinky's wedding (fortunately, also in the South Bay). That was a bit of an emotional smorgasboard: she was radiantly beautiful (of course); when her brother walked her up the aisle it really struck me how he's made the transition from "kid" to "man"; on the other hand, I wasn't the only person pondering that the last time I'd been in that church was for maestrateresa's funeral. There was one point at the reception, when badassslinky and her husband were dancing, and she turned just so and I saw maestrateresa in her face. A very joyous day, all in all.

Then it was back to the Crown site to hang out a bit, even though the "Booze for Boobs" fundraiser isn't really my style. I got some nice conversations in, but when most of your friends are participating in a ritual of recreational drunkenness (even the ones who aren't themselves drinking) it gets a bit boring when that isn't your thing. And anyway it was cold and I had to get up early to come back Sunday for peerage meetings, so I didn't stay very late. Stayed through last court on Sunday, mostly to see dave_orphal receive a Pelican. Then swung by mad_duchess's post-Crown-and-housewarming party for a while. I see why she fell in love with that house! I do so love the craftsman style -- especially the built-ins.

Over dinner I started browsing various 14th c. cookbooks in preparation for the cooks' play-date at Coronet. For some reason I'd been thinking coronet came right on the heels of crown, but I have a weekend off in between them. So that gives me a little more time to choose a source and pick some recipes to try. Oh, and belatedly send off my class proposals for Collegium. (The original call for classes came out during the Investigation That Ate My Life.) And then there's the loom to work on! I think I've decided that my first "test" project will be some narrow tabby wool based on the specs for the Dublin Viking caps that I taught at the A&S Tourney. (The wool caps were mostly made out of a 20-25cm wide fabric, and having the selvedges on both edges affects the sewing techniques, so it would be cool to be able to make them out of fabric the right width.) After that maybe I'll try a length of diamond twill sufficient for a Thorsbjerg tunic. And then ....